We’ve reached the close of another week, and it was a surprisingly smooth one considering the season. Typically, the weeks following a conference as big as E3 are dry as a desert: everyone gave out all the news they had at E3, leaving nothing to fill the void in the days and weeks after the party’s over and everyone’s gone home.

Not so, this year. E3 was so big that there’s still news left over. Speaking of leftovers, here’s a few bonus bits of news that fell through the cracks this week:

Valve forced to change Left 4 Dead 2 cover art
The box for Left 4 Dead 2 is barely changed from the original game. The artists at Valve just hacked a couple of fingers off the cover’s presumably zombie-infected hand and went on their way, until the ESRB said they had gone too far. The official Left 4 Dead Blog made a little humor out of it, at least. Long story short: two formerly hacked-off fingers are now two cleverly folded fingers.

America’s Army launches new version, then lays off staffThe day after the U.S. Army’s game development studio released Version 3.0 of its free-to-play promotional shooter America’s Army,the entire Emeryville, CA-based studio has been canned to “consolidate development.” While the Emeryville team did the bulk of the development work, future development will go on at an Army office at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. “This consolidation will allow us to gain efficiencies between our public and government applications,” said an Army PR officer to Shacknews. ” We appreciate all the hard work that every member of the America’s Army team has contributed to the project, and we look forward to delivering future America’s Army game releases in the months ahead.”

Image courtesy Joystiq

Xbox Originals is now Xbox Games on Demand
Xbox Originals, the area of the Xbox Live Game Marketplace that sells downloadable original Xbox games for Xbox 360, has been rebranded. The change was made in anticipation of Xbox 360 games joining the downloadable service in August. Available later this summer “on demand” will be Assassin’s Creed, Mass Effect, and Civilization Revolution among others.

Xbox 360 Arcade systems get barely noticeable upgrade
Speaking of barely consequential Xbox platform changes, Microsoft has quietly slipped a little more memory inside Xbox 360 Arcade systems, bringing the onboard storage up to 512MB. The change allows Microsoft to ship the consoles without a 256MB memory card to supplement the 256MB that was previously onboard. The memory is expected to be used by ever-expanding Microsoft core system software, which is now possible after the roll-out of last fall’s New Xbox Experience. “Less storage will be available to users,” warned Microsoft in a statement to Eurogamer.

China starts another “undesirable” game crackdown
China is going to give game regulation another try. Once again, government officials have come out speaking for the whole of the Chinese people, slamming online games as “spiritual opium,” according to Reuters. In the near future, the General Administration of Press and Publication will issue new rules in an attempt to control user access to online games, which now have 40 million players in China. Previous rules have centered on Internet cafes, where minors have been banned and adults have had time limitations imposed, but were largely ineffectual due to rampant piracy and the lack of a comprehensive ratings system.

That does it for this week’s tidbits. Until next week, take care of your fingers.